I work in IT in US and have started actively looking. I have a first interview lined up next week. I am treating it as more of a warm up interview to get a feel for the market. I haven't interviewed in 7 or so years.
Kind of tough that so many companies hire but are also doing layoffs at the same time.
your entire reply is chat gpt. this is another cultural indicator that screams that you are not going to make it.
also the ratios for IT shell job grades 3,4,5. they are not made up in any way, it’s all service now. do you even work here?
@1mp Dude, this reads like a rant stitched together from a few bad meetings and one angry recruiter. A few quick things:
Anecdotes ≠ the whole country. Yes, tech salaries went up and people change jobs more often. That’s true in every market when demand for a skill explodes. It doesn’t prove “nobody invested” or that an entire nation was living on fumes.
“Nobody invested the money”? Come on. India has had substantial household and public savings for years. The real issue is how savings get allocated — infrastructure, health, education, or speculative stuff — not that savings magically vanished.
Staff-cost math needs receipts. Throwing out ratios like “1/8 → 1/4 → 2/3” without a clear baseline, role definitions, or time frame is meaningless. If you want to make a point about cost arbitrage failing, show the numbers: total comp, benefits, productivity, and turnover costs. Otherwise it’s just noise.
This isn’t a morality play. If your gripe is corporate — fine. Offshoring for short‑term savings without investing in local capability is a d-mb strategy and creates fragility. That’s a valid, actionable criticism. But blaming “the Indians” as a culture? That’s lazy and toxic.
Progress happened (even if uneven). Education, child survival, poverty trends and enrolment have moved in the right direction over the last decade in many places. Doesn’t mean everything’s fixed — it means the blanket doom narrative is wrong.
If you want to dunk on something, dunk on the leadership decisions that chased cheap labor without building resilience. Ask for the cost breakdowns. Demand evidence for those wild ratios. I’ll happily post a short, sourced appendix with the actual indicators if you want to go data vs. drama.
not to mention you guys went from 1/8th to 1/4th to now market 2/3rd the cost of another hire over the course of a decade
what cracks me up is that nobody in all of india seems to have invested that money in any way. a smart government would invest in something that makes the country resistant to an issue with consulting. a smart citizen would invest to retire or save for a rainy day. but i don’t see any of that.
it’s like the whole country from top to bottom seriously thought they could charge more forever and live in a paradise where they change jobs for more money every 18 months forever. it’s absurd. for these reasons i will deeply enjoy the fall when i would not otherwise. at least, not for the indians.
yes for our leadership team who sold us out for what has become not very much cost savings. and even losses when you factor in how many efforts out of india go.
@OP how many? 16.25
@17r never seen a BLR staff do or lead any significant IT transformation. Its all run out of the west. Sad but true
@11t why would BNG be safe, large number of more junior staff, less tenure and business knowledge, our challenge here in BLR will be instead of more work being shipped here, AI and automation being able to replace us. I can imagine far fewer everywhere, but especially here with things like ops, delivery and support
Shell IT is polluted with overhead roles. 70% of project resources are BAs, PMs, POs and advisors (often high and expensive JGs) that create PowerPoints rather than engineers who deliver the actual products.
The problem is that much of the leadership comes from these same backgrounds, so they do not acknowledge or address the imbalance which keeps the organization highly inefficient
@q2 If you are still in the IT org, then a strong business will not save you. I assume you are doing work for T&S. Great biz, interesting work, but if you are still in IT org you are vulnerable for what is coming (unless you are in BNG hub).
what year do you think it is
@bq having shell on your resume sells your resume. no need to try harder than just listing your current employer. other companies will beat a path to your door.
Also in IT. I was starting my outside search, but got moved into a money making line of business where my skills are useful and valued. I am actually being challenged and feel good about not just working in a money pit function that only works on projects that stroke leadership’s ego.
Why would I do that? So I'd have to work for a paycheck?
resumes should be updated quarterly if not monthly. you should here a master resume with every project you’ve ever done and then have a maximally impressive and relevant one page version per job app
good on you for doing some practice runs with companies you don’t care about
@OP good to start practicing, but wait for the package if you have many years of seevice. Don't drop the package, It will come soon.
good luck, and do come back and share your experiences, keen to hear market response to the skills and experiences you have developed in Shell and how they are valued. For everyone its good to do these things and know where you stand, good way to take control vs worrying